One critique of Aristotelian ontology

But a problem with this view is that it entails that dogs, trees, stones, and the like are not really substances. The true substances are the fundamental particles, and to be a dog, a tree, or a stone is just for these particles to take on a certain kind of accidental form. Yet this seems clearly wrong insofar as these and other natural objects appear to have causal powers that are irreducible to the sum of the causal powers of fundamental particles. … (Edward Feser, Aristotle’s Revenge: The Metaphysical Foundations of Physical and Biological Science, p. 30)

Another problem is that from the Aristotelian point of view, the atomist doesn’t really get rid of substantial form and prime matter at all, but simply relocates them. Supposed that to be a dog, a tree, or a stone really is to have a merely accidental form, and that the only true substances are the fundamental particles. We would still have to regard them as composites of substantial form and prime matter, for the reasons given in the arguments from limitation and from change. (p. 31)

The basic idea of the first line of argument is, again, that a form is of itself universal, so that we need a principle to explain how it gets tied down, as it were, to a particular thing, time, and place. … Matter – the matter of this individual bowling ball, of that individual wheel, and so forth – is what does this job. (pp. 27-28)

On an Aristotelian analysis, a real change involves the gain or loss of some attribute, but also the persistence of that which gains or loses the attribute. For example, when a banana goes from being green to being yellow, the greenness is lost and the yellowness is gained, but the banana itself persists. If there were no such persistence, we would not have a change to the banana, but rather the annihilation of a green banana and the creation of a new, yellow one in its place. (p. 28)

Without prime matter, there could be no substantial change, because there would be no subject of change that persists through the change. (pp. 30)

Aristotelianism as a philosophical system is certainly something that should be learned, as it provides the background from which much of modern thought emerged. However, it is another thing altogether to assert its continual relevance for modern thought, especially when it deals with ontology on the same level of empirical science, as Edward Feser seems to have done.

In the initial part of the book, Feser asserted that the atomism of modern science is not feasible as an understanding of how things are constituted. Feser does not dispute the empirical findings of modern science, but rather the modern theory of atomism that lies behind the empirical findings. Feser argued his case by utilizing Aristotle's view of form and matter, utilizing an argument from limitation and an argument from change to assert that modern atomism fails to explain the nature of things.

While there is a rejection of modern atomic theory, it must be stated here that Feser is not disputing atomic theory in general, just its explanatory power. Feser is not "anti-science" in rejecting that atoms are there, but rather, as we shall look further in subsequent posts, he is rejecting the status we assign to atoms in modern atomic theory.

With that caveat, it must be stated that Feser's rejection of modern atomic theory is flawed. First, in the argument from limitation, Feser argues that even if atoms were constitutive of substance, they still need to have "substantial form" and "prime matter." But that is to impose Aristotelianism as constitutive of reality, instead of a description of reality one chooses to use. But what is reality, really? Whatever reality really is, on the empirical level, reality is investigated through the scientific method. It is not modern atomic theory that has to conform to Aristotelianism, but modern ontology that has to conform to modern atomic theory.

In this instance, the answer to the argument from limitation is simple: Atoms are made up of the subatomic particles: Protons, Neutrons and Electrons. All of them ultimately are made up of quarks. The process by which quarks make subatomic particles make atoms which make things does not imply a reduction of all substance to quarks, for we can say that substances emerged out of more basic matter. Form is an emergent quality, not a basic quality. It emerges through the interaction of atoms with each other, and complexity in their interactions creates form.

The response to Feser's second argument, the argument from change, is to assert that qualities like color are emergent qualities not primary qualities. There is no substantial change in the banana because the banana did not change, only various chemicals in the banana have been altered as the fruit ripened. There was no change from green-ness to yellow-ness, but rather there was substantial change in certain chemicals in the banana, while there is no change in the banana itself, and the secondary quality of "green-ness" changes to "yellow-ness" due to the chemical changes that have taken place in the banana. One does not have to postulate prime matter, because based on modern scientific theory, there is no need for this idea at all.

As will be seen in subsequent interactions, Feser has more objections to this and other modern scientific theories. Again, the conflict is not truly at the empirical level, but rather one step above in ontology in the empirical plane (since Aristotle is no idealist).